Jeff's rig included a Feickert Firebird turntable ($12,995), Thomas Schick Tonearm ($2290), My Sonic Lab Signature Gold Cartridge ($8995), Balanced Audio Technology VK-P12SE phono stage ($9995), Unison Research CD Due DAC ($4995) and Unico 150 Integrated ($6495), and his Joseph Audio Perspective2…
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On the last day of the show, loudspeaker designer Jeff Joseph showed no signs of slowing down. Remote in hand, he bounced around his room like the proverbial battery bunny, welcoming attendees, switching his rig between analog and digital playback, and generally smiling his way through it all.
I like speakers with dark wood finishes. My friend Sphere loves speakers painted red. My partner “bb” prefers blue ones that match her room. Tekton Design makes speakers in these and many other colors and finishes. Tekton speakers, though, also have many tweeters, which gives them a distinctive look.
I always get happy seeing Tekton Design’s principal Eric Alexander. I’ve reviewed two of his speakers (the Pendragon and the Impact Monitors), and I am a fan of Eric’s "tweeter arrays;” they deliver a precise and seamless midband that must be heard to be appreciated. It's not that looks don't…
Jon Ver Halen’s Refined Audio room was the opposite of the Audio Company’s VAC/Von Schweikert room. It was small, had one grim light, gray carpet, gray walls, no banners, and two little black directly-heated triode amps with two tubes driving single-driver full-range (Cube) speakers in small, plain boxes. No Hollywood glitz socialite glamor, but the sound was rich, highly detailed, and pure. Here's why:
The $10,900/pair Cube Audio “Mini Nenuphar” speakers use only one paper-cone, full-range driver with no crossover. These single-driver speakers were powered by mono single-ended…
American Sound distribution presented three rooms featuring Avantgarde horn loudspeakers, and, in the two rooms I visited, Wadax digital products. This was the U.S. debut of Wadax’s much-talked-about flagship, the Atlantis, the company's all-out assault on the state of the digital art. If looks are any measure, the Atlantis was designed to compete with brands like dCS and Esoteric. The design of their casework is distinctive.
The Atlantis consists of three components that may be purchased separately: a Transport ($45,000), DAC ($69,000), and server $20,000. In the main room,…
I been watching the development of ModWright Instruments’ Daniel Wright since he started, many years ago, as a modifier of Sony and Oppo CD players. Dan is emerging as a manufacturer of some of the most refined-sounding and distinctive-looking tube amplifiers and pre-amplifiers on the high-end scene. As a reviewer, I’ve been waiting to see a ModWright product that just jumped out of the deck and said, “Herb! Review me.”
I just spotted it. It's Dan’s latest creation, the beautiful Ambrose Ai325 Tube Integrated ($9995 intro price). The Ai325 uses pairs of 300B directly heated triodes in a…
I saved the Overture room for last because for me and my taste, this room had the best sound at CAF 2019. It had the best sound because Technic’s US rep Bill Voss, has evolved into a master DJ and product elucidator. Bill was showcasing Technics’ new SL-1000RE-S turntable to brilliant effect. The word-on-the-street is, the SL-1000RE-S is in the running for some kind of Best Turntable Ever award, and I can believe it.
With every record Bill Voss played, I could feel the SL-1000RE-S forcing the system to ‘power the room’ and, when that happens, music sounds very there. Bill played…
Look at the photo. What you see is a re-imagining of the original Quad ESL 57s by Dave Slagle of EMIA (Experience Music Intact Audio). The only thing that remains from the original Quads are the PVC stator parts rebuilt to original standards by Wayne Picquet of Quads Unlimited in Longwood, Florida. The cabinets are made from solid 12/4 tiger maple with walnut accents and built by Andy Armstrong. These reinvented Quads are bi-amped using two push-pull 300B tube amps, which are mounted in the loudspeaker’s base and connected to the Quad panels through Slagle-wound step-up transformers. The high…
The Revox A-77 has extremely good speed regulation, vanishingly low wow and flutter, very low noise, superb tape handling, and the smoothest, widest-range frequency response of any recorder we have ever tested.
The portable version, with built-in monitor amps and speakers, is very compact for a machine with 10½ reel capacity, and is easily carried by one person. Now that the later version is equipped with a flutter-filtering tension arm, our only criticism of the A-77 is its use of three-circuit jacks for the micro phone inputs instead of the XLR-type receptacles that are considered to be…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Open-reel tape deck with optinal Dolby noise-reduction system (1973). Speeds: 3.75 and 7.5 ips or (in HS Model) 7.5 and 15 ips. Stereo tracks: 4 standard; 2 on special order. Reel capacity: 10.5".
Weight: 34 lb.
Price: $569 (1971); $799, $999 with Dolby (1973), no longer available (2019).
Manufacturer: Revox USA, Syosset, NY 11791 (1973). Revox Deutschland GmbH (2019), Am Krebsgraben 15, D-78048 VS-Villingen, Germany. Tel: +49 7721 8704 0. Fax: +49 7721 8704 29. Web: www.revox.de. Revox (Schweiz) AG (2019) Wehntalerstra·e 190, CH-8105…
We have still not received a pair of these for formal testing, which may be a good thing in view of our feelings these days about "updatings." (Our feelings about such are clarified in this issue's "As We See It.")
We auditioned Ohm Fs in three audio stores, and came away with five reactions. In one store, the two speakers we heard sounded similar to one another, but not terribly impressive. Stereo imaging was extraordinarily good, which has been the case with every truly omnidirectional speaker system we have heard, but the middle range of the Ohm Fs was rather markedly colored, with a…